Why didn't the Romans invent steam engines?

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...the Chinese always prided themselves at continuing to keep their Empire together in one piece through the Dynasties from the time of the Egyptians up to (our) Millennium ...I never thought to ask about a long time awareness of the power of steam.

 Given that they are the tea brewing nation to end all tea brewing nations, I expect that over time many kettle observers 'had thoughts'. And those that took it any distance probably found themselves in some difficulties for the reason expressed by our own dear Duke Wellington for regarding railways with disfavour as likely  'encouraging the lower orders to move about'.

 

 

...Egyptians up to (our) Millennium - compared to the ephemeral (here today gone tomorrow) Romans, Greeks, us and the Russians etc.

 You left out the Mesopotamian and Persian empires before Greece and Rome. Western Europe's nations and their subsequent overseas extensions are the end result. So what's the better method? Maintain 'same old same old' for as long as possible, or have a seemingly disorganised succession? (The book of Daniel c2 succinctly summarises, all the way from Mespot to the coming of the Borg Stone kingdom.)

[Hroth]

Considering the quite major feats of surveying the Romans carried out in the construction of their aqueduct systems, I’m quite sure that if they had felt the need for a revised mathematical system, they were quite capable of devising one.

Roman calculation was carried out using variations on the abacus.  Literally, they would "calculate" a computation using pebbles (calculus) on a board, and record the result using Roman numerals. No faffing about multiplying cxi by vii on a wax tablet!  The medieval exchequer used a similar tool, the chequered cloth used to place the counters on.

 

We were still struggling to get to grips with arabic numbers and the decimal point in the 17th century! (If I remember correctly, there is something about the matter in Pepys diaries, and he was the civil servant in charge of the Navy!)

[GeoffAlan]

Splitters!!!

Long live the Peoples front of Judea!

[rockershovel]

Roman calculation was carried out using variations on the abacus. Literally, they would "calculate" a computation using pebbles (calculus) on a board, and record the result using Roman numerals. No faffing about multiplying cxi by vii on a wax tablet! The medieval exchequer used a similar tool, the chequered cloth used to place the counters on.

 

We were still struggling to get to grips with arabic numbers and the decimal point in the 17th century! (If I remember correctly, there is something about the matter in Pepys diaries, and he was the civil servant in charge of the Navy!)

Pepys certainly complained often and in detail, about the standard and nature of the handwriting in the older documents he regularly saw, but was also familiar with the slide-rule (although he did not appear to be able to use one himself)

 

Abacus type counting and recording systems remained in common use at that time, tally-sticks and the like were well understood, as were iterative systems for division and multiplication. The Roman numbering system might look cumbersome and counter-intuitive to our eyes, but that’s mainly because most moderns don’t understand how it was actually used.

Edited November 27, 2017 by rockershovel

[coachmann]

The Romans built the A5 before inventing the steam engine and Caesar himself named the company Gods Wonderful Romans, but not a sod was cut, a sleeper laid nor a damsel distressed.   

Edited November 27, 2017 by coachmann

[Big James]

What I’ve read on the Roman Empire is that they was a technological advanced civilisation. Up to the the 3rd century. When the civil war know as the crisis of the 3rd century happened. From that point on the Empire stagnates into decline as they was to busy fighting over who was going to wear the purple. They went from being an outward looking people looking at other people’s innovations to looking at themselves.

 

Big james

[Joseph_Pestell]

Necessity is the mother of invention. The Romans did not need steam engines. QED.

Edited November 27, 2017 by Joseph_Pestell

[runs as required]

My avatar (Brunton's Steam Horse) is testament to the fact that when horses become more expensive and scarce than men - dangerous forces like steam need to to be unleashed.

 

On the Roman Wall we are told how the Romans harnessed the power of freezing water to split the hard igneous rock of the Whin Cill along which the Wall is aligned.

That must have severely limited the Romans' days of quarrying - a steam hammer/splitter would have been a warmer all-year-round device.

 

dh (actually today would have be an ideal goollie-freezer)

[luckymucklebackit]

The Romans built the A5 before inventing the steam engine and Caesar himself named the company Gods Wonderful Romans, but not a sod was cut, a sleeper laid nor a damsel distressed.   

 

Couldn't have been GWR, it was the Romans that set Standard Gauge!

[ejstubbs]

Did they even have "plateway" horse drawn railways ?.

 

The Greeks built the Diolkos in around 600BC to enable portage of vessels, or at least their cargoes, across the Isthmus of Corinth.  The track was paved with limestone, but had grooves for the wagons to run in (shades of the Haytor Granite Tramway), although it's disputed whether these were deliberately cut or simply eroded by traffic.  The 'gauge' was roughly 5ft 3in (yes, like in Ireland!)  Motive power appears to have been either human or animal.  The track was engineered to avoid the steepest gradients, much like a wagonway, plateway or railway.  It lasted in use until the first century AD, so the Romans would certainly have known about it - the Wiki article about wagonways says that there were similar tracks in Roman Egypt.

Edited November 27, 2017 by ejstubbs

[Guy Rixon]

I was aware when working in China by the way the Chinese always prided themselves at continuing to keep their Empire together in one piece through the Dynasties from the time of the Egyptians up to (our) Millennium - compared to the ephemeral (here today gone tomorrow) Romans, Greeks, us and the Russians etc.

 

I never thought to ask about a long time awareness of the power of steam.

dh

 

 

But the Chinese didn't keep their empire in one piece all the way through. It came apart rather badly during the Warring States period.

 

Also, the Roman empire lasted about 1600 years which is rather better than ephemeral.

[The Johnster]

The Romans, employing Greek technology, might have been capable of devising a steam engine capable of practical work if they had needed one, but in their reality, there were plenty of slaves to do the work, so they didn't need one.  Slave dependent economies from Pharonic Egypt to the 19th century American South do not tend to develop technology, which is often driven by the need to reduce a wage bill or the cost of access raw materials; it is no coincidence that steam engines were developed in connection with mining and pumping.

 

Three things mitigated against a Roman steam engine, firstly the presence of a sufficient slave labour force, secondly the lack of metalworking technology to produce the materials or joints to build a pressure vessel or maintain a pressure seal in the piston, and thirdly, a lack of understanding of the physics involved in differential pressures, condensation, and creating vacuums as Newcomen's pumping engines used.  These were not possible without Newtonian physics, which were of course themselves founded on discoveries from the Classical World as well as later Arabic developments.

 

The Archimedes Screw was available to them, though, so they might conceivably have developed Hero's copper ball device into some sort of turbine...

[jjb1970]

Unfortunately most people still believe that the Roman empire fell in AD476 when Italy fell to the Goths and ignore the fact that the other capital of the empire lasted for another 1000 years. Although the Eastern half of the empire became increasingly Hellenised it was nevertheless the Roman Empire. Even if most call it the Byzantine Empire (something the great J.B.Bury was famously averse to).

[Edwin_m]

Perhaps the difficulty of working out how to say "it might be that it would have done this" in Latin discouraged theorising, favouring military prowess which could be achieved with simple vocatives and imperatives? 

 

Romani ite domum. 

Edited November 27, 2017 by Edwin_m

[APOLLO]

The Greek automaton Talos was steam powered - watch him die when his boiler is emptied !!!!!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdgY9vgRcRw

 

Brit15

[Big James]

If you had asked anyone in the eastern Empire who they was they would have said Romans. Also may people forget the Justinian the great come very close to reconquering the western half of the empire but was the stopped by the plague. Most people forget the Chinese Empire was overrun and conquered by the mongols who went native.

 

Big james

[brack]

On the Roman Wall we are told how the Romans harnessed the power of freezing water to split the hard igneous rock of the Whin Cill along which the Wall is aligned.

That must have severely limited the Romans' days of quarrying

As a native of West Northumberland, I would argue against this sentiment.

 

Plus on those rare days when the temperature creeps above zero (-15 with windchill up your vallum) you could use wooden soaked wedges on the limestone.

[Colin_McLeod]

Long live the Peoples front of Judea!

POLITICS!

[Guy Rixon]

There's a lurking assumption here that steam engines, locomotive or otherwise, are the acme and measure of industrial development. I think steam power is actually a side effect of industrialization and the main industrial-revolution milestones (from the British/European/American experience) are: large-scale production of iron smelted with coal; production lines; electrical power and light; standardized small parts. IIRC, Rome/Constantinople had the iron, production lines and the standardisation, lacking only the electricity; and nobody had that until the late modern period.

 

From what I remember of Roman tech, the military got most of it. Their empire was fighting existential battles for 2/3 of its history. Therefore, if there had been a Roman steam engine, I suggest that it would have driving a tank c. AD 1000 and the controls would have been in labelled in Greek.

[rockershovel]

Surely they went directly to road transport, Caesar being proverbially sic in omnibus?

Edited November 27, 2017 by rockershovel

[pete_mcfarlane]

I don't think Rome faced any enemies who didn't follow the principle of "line up and charge with largely inferior weapons", and the fortifications they did encounter were of traditional earth bank and palisade construction.

The Romans did fight many enemies who were as sophisticated as they were, rather than just taking on barbarian tribes who charged in a vast mob towards the legions (and remember that the size, backwardness, and stupidity of the barbarian horde would be increased in the Roman history books for dramatic effect). They fought and conquered peoples like the Jews and the Egyptians, who can hardly be classed as savages.

 

And even the Barbarians could destroy entire Roman armies through superior tactics (as the Germans did in the Teutoberg Forest) on the right day. What the Romans were good at was the logistics of keeping their army running, which is why they tended to eventually win. 

[kevinlms]

Which (sort of) illustrates my point. The Romans made great efforts to build aqueducts conveying drinking water into their cities, and constructing drains to remove effluent from them. They knew and used canal transport. They knew, and used, both the rag-and-chain pump and the Archimedean Screw). They certainly understood the principle of creating a vacuum by cooling steam in an enclosed space (Hero described this as a possible danger in experiments of this sort). They understood the use of cranks. If they COULD have constructed the sort of condensing engines which were the first steam engines, they would certainly have done so.

The Romans could have used an alternative power source. As they were great builders such as the aqueducts and roads, they could have harnessed volcanic power.

 

Sadly as we all know, they missed the opportunity by ignoring the wails of the Soothsayer. But instead of listening to the truth from her, they all just thought she was a nutter!

 

This was clearly depicted in Frankie Howard's 'Up Pompeii'!

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...the Barbarians.... 

Just in case anyone isn't clear on this point, this motley crew - the renderings of some of whose tribal names are still in common parlance for the ill behaved or non-conforming, Vandals, Goths, Huns - were part of a huge migration westward; and among them are the ancestors of the present majority populations of Western Europe.

 

Or more bluntly, the 'Barbarians' who wore down the western Roman Empire to failure are 'us'.  (Being very thorough and not wishing to leave a job undone, once settled and organised they took a trip back East and played a major part in disrupting the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle ages.)

[Colin_McLeod]

Surely they went directly to road transport, Caesar being proverbially sic in omnibus?

But his aunt Gloria got travel sick on Mondays on the suburban train;

 

"sic transit Gloria mundi"

Edited November 28, 2017 by Colin_McLeod

[Colin_McLeod]

Or his road fleet for delivering livestock;

 

Dar deygo

Forte laures inaro

Demarnt laures

Demar trux

Fulov causen hensen dux